In recognition of his profound influence in the field of molecular medicine, most notably his groundbreaking work on insulin receptors, crucial to establishing scientific understanding of diabetes and other endocrine disorders; of his incalculable services to higher education in the United States and beyond as an inspired teacher and mentor to generations of young researchers, including many from Israel; and of his vital concern for the advancement of scientific research in Israel, as demonstrated by his activity on the Scientific and Academic Advisory Committee of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Prof. Jesse Roth is a world-renowned diabetes researcher, best known for his research on cellsurface membrane receptors and other molecules of intercellular communication. His studies on the receptor for insulin and the receptor for adrenocorticotropin in the early 1970s became the model for many others that followed.
Born in New York in 1934, Roth earned an MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, New York in 1959, and was trained in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital, Washington University, St. Louis. He subsequently joined Salomon Berson and future Nobel laureate Rosalyn Yalow at the Bronx Veterans Hospital as a research fellow. There, he partnered with Shimon Glick, now professor and former dean at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and together, the quartet introduced new tests for diagnosing disorders of growth hormone secretion that remain the gold standards in the field.
Between 1963-1991, he performed research on diabetes and related disorders at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (an NIH agency) in Bethesda, Maryland, as clinical associate, section chief, branch chief, and scientific director. In 1990, he accepted a professorship of internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and was director of its Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Between 1985-1991, he also held the rank of Assistant Surgeon General of the United States.
He is widely known for introducing concepts and devising novel methods for the direct study of cellsurface receptors for insulin and other hormones, in work that led to recognizing the vital role of these receptors in transforming the information relayed by extracellular hormones into cellular events.
The research led to finding patients with genetic or acquired insulin receptor defects and paved the way to understanding that many human disorders are linked to such defects.
Roth has made great impact on scientific research through hundreds of publications, some of which have been declared “citation classics” or designated “benchmark papers in biochemistry”. He has also mentored generations of researchers in the fields of diabetes, endocrinology, metabolism, and aging, transmitting his insatiable curiosity and sense of wonder in the quest to understand and treat human diseases. One of his former students is the Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Yehiel Zick.
Roth has received numerous accolades and honors throughout his prolific career, among them, the 1982 Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. Public Health Service, and awards for highest scientific achievement from the Endocrine Society and from the American Diabetes Association. He served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named laureate of the Gairdner Foundation International Award. He also served as President of the American Friends of D-Cure, a supporter of diabetes research in Israel.
Today, he is Professor of Medicine at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine and heads the Laboratory for Diabetes and Diabetes-Related Disorders at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, the research branch of North Shore- Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System, and is also Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.